


all you have is your fire

by rayguntomyhead



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Shattered Glass
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fic Bit, Fluff, M/M, Revolution, and every Starscream is at least a little filled with grump and bristle, canon alternate universe, every Megatron in every universe is a poet, that's my headcanon and I'm sticking to it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 18:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17167457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayguntomyhead/pseuds/rayguntomyhead
Summary: Numbers spiral and etch themselves glowing on the screen, burning brighter than radium. Megatron aches, clutches the cold iron rim of his desk until it dents under rough fingers. They spell out nothing so much as disaster and there’s nothing he can do, nothing, because the numbers never lie.“You’re brooding again, aren’t you.”Or, snippets of a different Megatron and Starscream





	all you have is your fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Airheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airheart/gifts).



> Basically written because I found out that Shattered Glass Megatron was a mathematician, and well. Here we are. Happy Yuletide, Airheart! I hope you enjoy an extra ficbit treat :) Disclaimer that I have only a shaky grasp of comic canon.

Numbers spiral and etch themselves glowing on the screen, burning brighter than radium. Megatron aches, clutches the cold iron rim of his desk until it dents under rough fingers. They spell out nothing so much as disaster and there’s nothing he can do, nothing, because the numbers never lie. 

Even now, even after all they’ve done, it’s not enough. 

Behind his screen the spires of Polyhex gleam through the half-open window, stretched out in penance to the sky. It’d be so easy, to slip out and up. Higher and higher, twisting into the wind until it screamed across his wings. 

“You’re brooding again, aren’t you.” 

It isn’t a question. Megatron twitches, doesn’t look behind him because there isn’t a voice in the universe he knows better. 

“Starscream,” he says. His shoulders drop to meet slender hands scraping up them until static shivers down his struts. “I… I thought you were sleeping.” 

Fingers digs into his seams, weight pressing in as Starscream huffs and totters on the tips of his pedes. 

“I was,” he says. “Then someone decided to get up and sulk at the stars.” 

“I wasn’t _sulking,”_ Megatron says, slumping over his desk, sinking back into the weight of Starscream behind him. “I was doing calculations.” 

“Oh my mistake,” Starscream says bright and false as plated gold. “You decided to get up to sulk _and_ calculate.”

He works his clever, clever fingers into a knot of wires, soothing the kinks. “I suppose in that case…” and he’s still talking, still grumbling and griping but Megatron lets it roll over him softer than sun warmed steel and melts in his hands. 

 

 

“They made me watch, as they burned Crystal City to cinders,” the Seeker says, and his eyes burn, and his words burn, and his hands never tremble. “Every mech in that city. It took an orn–“ 

His optics flicker, shining unnaturally bright to light the energon smeared at the corner of his lips. 

Megatron lowers his weapon, watches wings sprayed high and defiant lock, tremble. Curving around this Starscream like brackets around the bristling variables of him. Megatron burns to touch them. 

“You are welcome here with me,” he says, “for as long as you wish to stay.” 

He lets his field unroll, relax, brushing out in welcome. Starscream’s wings flutter, fan down and then his field dances, pops and burst like coronal eruptions just at the edge of Megatron’s awareness 

“I won't be a charity case. I’ll do my part for the cause,” Starscream says, raises his chin. “I’m _brilliant_.” 

 

 

It hurts, burns, pain lighting Megatron’s sensors sharper than acid rain. _One, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen._ The numbers pull him away, let him curl into the familiar spiral of them as he’s dragged between Astrotrain and Thundercracker. 

There’s a medic, Ambulon? Or some typical medic-sounding name. Newly escaped from the merciless Prime and his followers, and flaking paint like guilt behind him wherever he goes. Perhaps he can dull the pain, allow Megatron to take the field again. 

“Like _slagging scrap_ are you going back out there.” 

Oh, look. Starscream. Megatron pries an eye open wide enough to drink in the sight of him, blazing and haloed by the bursting bombs above them. He’s _stunning_ , armor scraped all to hell, thrusters glowing, wings slashed with neon ribbons of energon. 

“Don’t even try it,” Starscream kneels, lips pulling into a scowl as he he slides a hand under Megatron’s helm, cradling him. “I know exactly what’s busy stewing in that ridiculous processor of yours, and it’s not going to happen. _No._ ” 

He so beautiful. Megatron should tell him that. Except his mouth isn’t quite working and then Starscream rubs a thumb across his lips and hums warningly at him. He’s so warm, field flaring sharp then dipping tender as the world narrows tunneling until all Megatron can see is Starscream and he can’t– he needs– 

 

 

Alien. Everything about this world sears alien into his optics as Megatron glowers up into the night sky. He can stare at the brilliant jumble of pinprick flames until the gears in his neck lock and seize, trying to pick out _home_ – but in the end, he can never find it. 

The matt of organic growth under him prickles and pokes into his seams. It’s damp, the layer of earth underneath it depressing beneath his weight as he sits.

An ancient bottle of engex dangles from his fingers, black and thick as oil. The kind of grit-spackled slag that coats his intake thicker than the dust from the Iacon archives, goes down rough. There’s not much of it left anymore, on Cybertron. Not many left who would even want to keep it. Above him a ball of light drifts lazily between the others, a lucent copper drop breaking the stillness. A ship, somewhere, out there in the dark. 

A twig snaps behind him. Footsteps, familiar as his own even on this organic muck. Starscream settles beside him like he belongs there, like Megatron’s frame is his to tuck himself against, Megtron’s arm is his to drape around him for warmth. 

“There’s a perfectly nice observation deck on the ship,” Starscream says. “The key word in that sentence being the _deck_. Which is clean.”

Megatron rumbles a laugh, letting his engines knock up a notch until Starscream mumbles something despairing and buries his face in the crook of Megatron’s shoulder.

“No matter how many times I see the stars here, they still seem so strange. Like someone’s shuffled them up like game pieces and flung them out again,” Megatron says. 

Starscream’s field shivers with something almost tender. 

“You old poet,” he says muffled into Megatron’s plating. “Should have written books, with that silver tongue of yours.” 

Megatron grins up, up into the sky. 

“I think the world is better served with my admiration of the poetry of numbers,” he says. No, he’s no poet. Only an exile, an alien, flung out onto a lonely planet so very far from home. 

“Don’t try and pull the visor over my optics,” Starscream says. “You don’t have a ship full of mechs up there because you’ve got a knack for _mathematics._ ” 

“Well, actually–“ Megatron says. 

“And don’t try and pull semantics on me either, you ridiculous rust bucket,” Starscream says, and wraps an arm around Megatron’s waist. Pushes himself closer and digs sharp fingers into Megatron’s side, a silent, stubborn warning to no one near. 

Megatron shutters his optics, and holds him.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are love <3


End file.
